Thursday, March 22, 2007

Home Front

When the Nazis marched into Oslo in April 1940 on the heels of the Blitzkrieg that knocked out all major communication, transportation, and defense infrastructure, the Norwegian people knew they were in trouble. And while resistance to the conquerors and collaborators was initially haphazard, the volunteers of what became the Home Front committed themselves to what they realized was going to be a long process of liberation through combined efforts of civil and military organizations.

When the fascists returned to power in Washington with the 12/12/2000 imprimatur of the U.S. Supreme Court, many Americans likewise knew they were in trouble, and, like the Norwegians, realized the process of liberation was going to take a long time. Perhaps, though, because of the media-induced subversion of the American public mind and the collusion of national political leadership that legitimized the occupation of the seats of power in the American capitol by a government of traitors, the process of liberation has itself been subverted less by bewilderment than by a failure of imagination.

As Tore Gjelsvik observed in his book Norwegian Resistance 1940-1945, "The occupation did not only call forth self-sacrifice and patriotism; it was also fertile soil for egotism and greed for gain." Leaders like Norwegian Supreme Court Chief Justice Paal Berg--similar to American whistleblowers Sibel Edmonds and Ambassador Joseph Wilson--gave his nation a dawning self-respect, but the war of liberation was won by a combined will to resist sustained by professors and students, shipowners and sailors, connected through an underground press and maintained by funds raised to help those keeping the front line intact.

Morale in Norway was strengthened by, "hindering fraternisation with the enemy and isolating him and his Norwegian henchmen." Loyal Norwegians wore the Norwegian King's emblem 'H7'; perhaps instead of '9/11' emblems, Americans should display '12/12' insignias, and never hesitate to explain its meaning.

As Gjelsvik recalls, "We had lost our capacity for further military resistance...but the struggle against the political pressure and against a subversion of the mind had to be taken up at once, or else the basis for other forms of resistance at a later period would crumble away." If we wish to remove the occupying power in our country, patriotic American opinion makers, likewise, will need to encourage and sustain authentic resistance---not profit-seeking poseurs.